— — Amidst the other early Americana of today’s Artisan’s Day event at the Long Homestead in the City of Tonawanda, the quilts and the woven baskets and the butter churns, will sit a collection of arcane objects with glowing lights, exuding the low hum of electrical current.

The odd machines belong to Robert Wattam of North Tonawanda, who describes them as “questionable electrical medical devices.”

“In the old days, when electricity was first becoming common, people thought electricity was going to fix everything — medical things included,” he said. “And if you could get something electrical, it would cure all your ills.

“Unfortunately, some of the devices could hurt you. And some of them wouldn’t.”

Marilyn Soemann, head docent of the Long Homestead, said Wattam has been collecting the gadgets for years. When she started looking for people to exhibit at Artisan’s Day, she said, a number of sources directed her to him.

It’s a bit of a departure. Most of the exhibitors at the event will be much lower tech, including the arts of beekeeping, cooking, basket weaving and butter churning.

“It’s a fun thing,” she said. “He has probably aroused a bit of interest. I don’t think he’s ever done this before.”

Wattam’s resume reads like that of someone interested in electronics from an early age.

Born and raised in Tonawanda, he’s lived in North Tonawanda for the past 45 years. An Army veteran, he worked as an electronic technician at Sylvania Electronic Systems and Mennen-Greatbatch Medical Electronics and as an engineer at Sierra Research. After retiring, he taught electronics at Bryant & Stratton College for six years.

His collection starts with the very early 1900s “medical batteries” and violet-ray machines, which arrived in the 1920s after electricity became more common in homes.

Both use Tesla coils to produce their current, applied to the human body through various electrodes and plates. Those producing the machines claimed they could cure everything from arthritis to schizophrenia.

Wattam’s interest in the devices can be traced back to one from that time, a violet-ray machine owned by his aunt.

“She used to clean cottages over to Crystal Beach in the summer ... and in the winter, to make ends meet, she had one of these machines,” he said. “She used to take people in the back room and treat them for various ills.”

The device eventually wound up in the family attic, Wattam said. “My brother and I were forbidden to play with it — but we used to when the folks were away.”

In fact, the machine ... which features a bulb that lights up with blue light and various electrodes for various ailments, each filled with sparkling violet light when connected ... proved irresistible to members of his Boy Scout troop, he said.

“We used to form a long line, everyone holding hands. Someone would turn up the voltage and you could feel the current running through you,” he said. “The first guy to let go, of course, was a chicken.”

Far from curing all manner of ills, what the violet-ray machines actually did was heat up the subcutaneous tissue of the hand or whatever was touching the electrode, giving the recipient a tingling, warm feeling. High-end medicine, they’re not.

Years after the Boy Scout escapades, the machine went missing for a while, believed to have been thrown away. However, years later, Wattam was cleaning out his dad’s garage, “and I’ll be darned if in the back of the garage wasn’t this machine.”

Intrigued, he repaired it, researched it ... and then started noticing more of the contraptions at antique shops and the like.

The rest is history.

Wattam currently owns 30 to 40 machines. He hasn’t found anything new in a while; most of the machines were purchased in the 1980s and ’90s at flea markets and antique shops. (The market’s gotten a little pricier now.)

Some are newer than the medical batteries and the violet-ray machines, from The Mechanical Heart of the late 1930s (a money-maker that brought its creator $100,000 a year until the Food and Drug Administration shut him down) right up to The Stimulator, a gadget from 1996 endorsed by stuntman Evel Knievel with the slogan, “When it comes to pain, I’m an expert!”

In the days of the federal Food and Drug Administration, the gadget doesn’t claim to cure anything, but rather to deal with pain by using current on acupuncture points.

Key to the success of all the “questionable electrical medical devices,” Wattam said, from 1900 right up to 1996, were testimonials. Each of them was accompanied by pamphlets and praises extolling the virtues of the machines and their curative abilities (or videotapes in the case of the more modern machine).

Asked if anything of the machines actually helped any of the people who believed in them, Wattam just smiled ... and pointed out the power of the placebo effect.

“And if it didn’t work and the person didn’t get better or died, well then, they didn’t start it in time. Or they didn’t do it right,” he said. “It couldn’t fail.”

The Artisan’s Day event will also include many other exhibits and demonstrations, including a wool merchant, an apple expert, quilting, basket weaving, butter churning, old toys and a cooper. There will be antique appraisals for a small fee.